NTC@Maryland Sponsored Seminar Series: Dr. Ricardo Giesen

ITS-MD Student Chapter Seminar Series, Sponsored by National Transportation Center @ Maryland

On January 17th, 2014, 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM, Friday, Dr. Ricardo Giesen from Department of Transport Engineering and Logistics at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, gave a research presentation in the CEE Main Conference Room (1179 Martin Hall), University of Maryland, College Park. The topic is “Avoiding bus bunching: Real-time control of buses, from research to the streets”.

The problem of bus bunching in a high frequency service has been largely studied in the literature. This phenomenon is produced by two main factors (i) the variability in travel time between stops, which are extremely influenced by the presence of congestion and traffic lights along a corridor and (ii) variations in passenger demand. In order to tackle this phenomenon a wide range of control strategies have been proposed. Such control strategies may be divided into three categories: (i) station control, including bus holding, stop skipping and boarding limits; (ii) interstation control, such as operating speed control, bus overtaking and traffic signal priority mechanisms; and (iii) other control measures such as adding vehicles. Even though, remarkable works regarding control strategies have been developed, none of them had been successfully implemented on a large transit network with high frequency services. In this talk, we present a control scheme based on a rolling horizon optimization problem that can be implemented for real-time control of high frequency services. An analysis of simulation results and a pilot study conducted in Santiago, Chile are discussed. Finally the main challenges on the implementation phase are discussed.

Dr. Ricardo Giesen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Transport Engineering and Logistics at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He received a Civil and Industrial Engineering legres and MSc in Transportation Systems from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (1998), and then a PhD in Transportation Systems from University of Maryland at College Park (2007). Dr. Giesen specializes in public transportation systems analysis, network modelling and optimization, real-time operations and control, and logistics and distribution optimization. He has taught graduate level courses on transportation systems engineering, advanced methods in transportation and logistics, logistics engineering, and supply chain management. He is a member of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), World Transportation Research Society, INFORMS and their Transportation Science and Logistics Society, and served as board member of the Chilean Society for Transport Engineering (2009-2010).

Further information can be obtained from http://www.ing.puc.cl/cuerpo-docente/en/giesen-encina/.

Published July 9, 2014